The Pony; Moments you wish you could take back Free Dating, Singles and Personals

The Pony; Moments you wish you could take back Posted: 4/13/2008 5:23:35 PM
I wrote this for another thread, but someone just asked me for a copy of it so I thought I would post it here... Moments you wish you could take back I was 14 years old, it was dusk and the wind had come up for a big storm. We were bringing the horses in across the front field - I forget why we came that way, but it was unusual. That would be the first moment I'd wish to take back. They were already excited and silly in the high wind, when a big green garbage bag suddenly blew out of the fence line across their path... it was all the excuse they needed and they spooked and bolted down the driveway. No problem, because the gate to the highway was closed. They didn’t notice it until it was too late, the first ones hit the gate, the rest plowed into them, the gate broke under their weight and they spilled out onto the highway. Their hooves made a terrible clatter as the 15 or so of them galloped down the road. We grabbed leadropes from the barn and took off after them with that kind of heart-in-mouth, ears buzzing, frozen terror. Seemed inevitable that one of them would get hit by a car. Someone had called the police and the cars showed up as we found the horses in a field about a mile down the road. They were full of the excitement of their escape, still egging each other on with the "wind up their bum" and it looked like they were going to wheel back out onto the highway again. Like some silly Disney movie moment, I whistled for my pony and he looked at me, hesitated for a second, and then turned to come to me with the rest of them following. We put the leads on them, had to double a couple of them up, because there weren't enough to go around. Short of experienced help, we were going to lead them back down the highway in two shifts. So a few of the cops were going hang back and hold the remaining horses, while my brother and a couple of friends led the first group back home. Another moments’ decision... I stayed with the cops... "They're not the RCMP" we joked, "they might need a hand with the horses". I was holding my pony and his replacement, a two year old filly I was going to hit the big shows with next year. As the first group left, the horses left behind started to act up and dance around. In another moments’ decision, I switched with a cop, giving him the quieter pony and taking the more nervous horse myself. But just then the other cop yelled out as his horse broke for freedom and the lead shot through his hands. It looked like a disaster, but the first cop let go of my pony, and, with heroic effort, caught the other horse as he streaked past. The attempted escapee swung into my filly, knocking us off our feet, and she reared back, broke free and charged off to catch up to the group of horses... the pony stood there for a long moment, then neatly turned and followed her. I listened to my two horses race down the highway followed by the most sickening crash. I knew at least one of them had been hit by a car, but it was dark then and they were just out of our sight. Right on cue in this surreal night, the rain kicked in hard with big sheets whipped by the wind. I stood there in tears in the freezing rain trying to decide, if I had a choice, which one did I want to die? The filly was the future and I'd outgrown the pony. But it really wasn't much of a choice - I was born on this earth begging "dad can I have a pony?" which led to us getting the farm. Smoke wasn't just a pony... he was my friend who had shared miles of adventures and he'd heard all my secrets and dried a lot of childhood tears in his mane over the years. So I prayed to God in the rain to please let it be the filly. It felt like hours in the rain, everyone I asked said no one had been hurt but they didn’t know if a horse had died. I knew they lied. It pissed me off, it seemed so cruel not to just tell me what had happened. The cops brought my mum to get me and at first she tried to say she didn’t know, but I told her it was ok, I knew it was the pony. She broke down then and said “your brother wanted to be the one to tell you”. I insisted on going back to the barn to finish the feeding, wanting to save my brother the extra work on this hellish night. But I think I also wanted to lose myself in the normal routine in a world that felt like it would never be normal again. My brother came in with the last group of horses. I think, maybe, I’d hoped the pony would somehow be with them. He was cold, wet, tired, with blood on his jeans and we looked at each other in a silence that stretched into forever before he said "I'm so sorry, I tried. I tried to save him for you. I’m so sorry I couldn’t save him for you." We cried. The next summer I went on to the big shows on the filly, but you know, I never forgave her for not dying that night. And it hurt so bad, losing that pony, that I promised myself I'd never love another horse like that again. And I didn't, you know, I had some great ones, and a few that were very special to me, but never, ever did I open my heart that way again. Only the heart is kind of a funny thing, even though I distinctly promised myself, "Don't love another horse like that again" I didn't realize that what my heart heard was "Don't love like that again". And although I loved, because this certainly wasn't traumatic enough of an experience to shut me down totally, it was a careful sort of love, one that knew love could hurt and the world was much safer if you went to the office and never really came home again. So, yeah, there were a number of moments that night that I'd like to take back. Small decisions, that certainly seemed the right ones in the moment, and if I could change any one of them it might have given the night a different result. And changed the ripples that stretched on into my life... What would my life have been like, I wonder, if I hadn't had to spend so much time learning to trust love again? And, yet, if I hadn't struggled through those ripples, would I have missed the wisdom they brought me? Was it getting caught in the eddy for a time, or the getting out of it that was the more important thing? Because, eventually, it dawned on me that I never had love when I tried to protect myself from hurt. I had it all backasswards. You can’t protect and love at the same time; it gets all gummed up. The carefulness squeezes the life out of love. You can’t contain love to protect yourself from hurt… you just have to trust and let it flow freely without regard to hurt. I’m sorry this was so long, but somehow it seemed inadequate to say “my pony died”.